THE NEED TO KNOW: INFORMATION SHARING LESSONS FOR DISASTER RESPONSE
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 30, 2006
__________
Serial No. 109-143
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/
index.html
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
DAN BURTON, Indiana TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
CHRIS CANNON, Utah WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee DIANE E. WATSON, California
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
DARRELL E. ISSA, California LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JON C. PORTER, Nevada C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland
KENNY MARCHANT, Texas BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
PATRICK T. McHENRY, North Carolina Columbia
CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania ------
VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio (Independent)
------ ------
David Marin, Staff Director
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Phil Barnett, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on March 30, 2006................................... 1
Statement of:
Brennan, John, president and chief executive officer, the
Analysis Corp., McLean, VA; Donald F. Kettl, director, FELS
Institute of Government, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, PA; Brian A. Jackson, physical scientist,
RAND Corp.; and Lieutenant Steve Lambert, Virginia Fusion
Center, Virginia State Police.............................. 69
Brennan, John............................................ 69
Jackson, Brian A......................................... 89
Kettl, Donald F.......................................... 75
Lambert, Steve........................................... 101
Wells, Linton, II, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Networks and Information Integration, U.S. Department of
Defense; Peter F. Verga, Principal Deputy Assistant
Secretary for Homeland Defense, U.S. Department of Defense;
and Vance Hitch, Chief Information Officer, U.S. Department
of Justice................................................. 21
Hitch, Vance............................................. 51
Verga, Peter F........................................... 37
Wells, Linton, II........................................ 21
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Brennan, John, president and chief executive officer, the
Analysis Corp., McLean, VA, prepared statement of.......... 72
Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Maryland, prepared statement of............... 16
Davis, Chairman Tom, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Virginia, prepared statement of................... 4
Hitch, Vance, Chief Information Officer, U.S. Department of
Justice, prepared statement of............................. 54
Jackson, Brian A., physical scientist, RAND Corp., prepared
statement of............................................... 91
Kettl, Donald F., director, FELS Institute of Government,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, prepared
statement of............................................... 77
Lambert, Lieutenant Steve, Virginia Fusion Center, Virginia
State Police, prepared statement of........................ 103
Verga, Peter F., Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for
Homeland Defense, U.S. Department of Defense, prepared
statement of............................................... 39
Waxman, Hon. Henry A., a Representative in Congress from the
State of California, prepared statement of................. 11
Wells, Linton, II, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary,
Networks and Information Integration, U.S. Department of
Defense, prepared statement of............................. 00
THE NEED TO KNOW: INFORMATION SHARING LESSONS FOR DISASTER RESPONSE
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THURSDAY, MARCH 30, 2006
House of Representatives,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:13 a.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Tom Davis
(chairman of the committee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Tom Davis, Platts, Miller,
Marchant, Dent, Schmidt, Waxman, Cummings, and Van Hollen.
Staff present: David Marin, staff director; Steve Castor,
counsel; Chas Phillips, policy counsel; Rob White, press
secretary; Victoria Proctor, senior professional staff member;
Teresa Austin, chief clerk; Sarah D'Orsie, deputy clerk; Phil
Barnett, minority staff director/chief counsel; Michael
McCarthy, minority counsel; Earley Green, minority chief clerk;
and Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk.
Chairman Tom Davis. The committee will come to order. Good
morning. Welcome. A quorum being present, the committee will
come to order. I would like to welcome everybody to today's
hearing on information sharing and the situational awareness
during the management of an emergency. The purpose of this
hearing is to reignite public discussion and debate on barriers
to information sharing among agencies and highlight practices
and procedures that could be effective in encouraging and
enhancing information sharing among diverse entities.
The Government needs to be able to identify threats of all
types and meet or defeat them. Our success depends on
collecting, analyzing, and appropriately sharing information
found in data bases, transactions, and other sources. Both the
9/11 Commission report and the Select Katrina Committee report
made it clear there is a lack of effective information sharing
and analysis among the relevant public and private sector
entities.
We are still an analog Government in a digital age. We are
woefully incapable of storing, moving, and accessing
information, especially in times of crisis. Many of the
problems in these times can be categorized as ``information
gaps''--or at least problems with information-related
implications, or failures to act decisively because information
was sketchy at best.
Unfortunately, no Government does these things well,
especially big governments. The Federal Government is the
largest purchaser of information technology in the world, by
far, and one would think that we could share information by
now.
The 9/11 Commission found ``the most important failure was
one of imagination.'' Katrina was primarily a failure of
initiative. But there is, of course, a nexus between the two.
Both imagination and initiative--in other words, leadership--
require good information. And a coordinated process for sharing
it. And a willingness to use information--however imperfect or
incomplete--to fuel action.
With Katrina, the reasons reliable information did not
reach more people more quickly were many, for example: the lack
of communication and situational awareness paralyzed command
and control; DHS and the States had difficulty coordinating
with each other, which slowed the response; DOD lacked an
information sharing protocol that would have enhanced joint
situational awareness and communication between all military
components.
Information sharing and situational awareness will always
be predicated to an effective disaster response. With
approximately 60 days remaining before the start of hurricane
season on June 1st, this hearing will examine how the lessons
learned regarding information sharing in the context of law
enforcement, counterterrorism, and defense can be applied to
disaster response.
Information sharing is the backbone of successful emergency
preparation and response efforts. Historically, however, the
Federal Government has been so compartmentalized, information
sharing has been a pipe dream. The Federal Government is faced
with the difficult task of transforming from a ``need-to-know''
information sharing environment to a ``need-to-share.'' In
addition, the bureaucratic stovepipe arrangement in Federal
agencies restricts the Government's flexibility to analyze
information quickly, assess the need for services, and respond
effectively in emergency situations.
Governmentwide information policy authority rests with the
White House, in the Office of Management and Budget. I think
the White House, through OMB, has a critical role in
establishing and implementing policies and procedures for
Federal information sharing. Whether we are discussing disaster
management, counterterrorism, or law enforcement, overarching
guidance and oversight to help Federal agencies establish a
structure for partnering with one another and local and State
organizations.
Given the lessons learned from Katrina, emergency managers
and officials are obligated to the American people to produce a
more nimble, effective, and robust response to predictable
natural disasters. How can we avoid the inadequate information
sharing and murky situational awareness that characterized the
Government response to Katrina? Are impediments to more
effective information sharing primarily technological,
structural, cultural, or bureaucratic in nature?
The committee's hearing will include a review of the issues
raised by the Select Committee Report. This hearing is not
intended to review the facts surrounding Hurricane Katrina, but
will use the disaster to highlight instances where
collaboration and information sharing among agencies is
lacking. In addition, the committee will explore the barriers
to effective information sharing, learn what entities--
including State, local, defense, intelligence, homeland
security, and industry--are particularly adept at information
sharing, and examine the models, policies, and methods which
have proven successful. Finally, the committee is interested in
learning about whether there is a need for additional
legislation, guidance, procedures, or resources to facilitate
the information sharing priorities outlined by the witnesses.
The committee views this hearing as a new beginning on the
road to improving information sharing among Government agencies
and between the public and private sectors. To this end,
private sector stakeholders and other key agency personnel,
including representatives from the Department of Homeland
Security and the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence, will be asked to testify at future hearings.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Tom Davis follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. I would now recognize the distinguished
ranking member, Mr. Waxman, for his opening statement.
Mr. Waxman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing to examine issues raised by the failed response to
Hurricane Katrina. The report of the Select Committee on
Hurricane Katrina identified widespread and serious problems
with our Nation's disaster preparedness and response. The
Government Reform Committee must take the next steps in finding
solutions to these problems so that the Government can better
help our citizens through the next disaster.
This hearing on how to improve information sharing during a
disaster is a good first step for our committee to take. I hope
we can continue to work together on oversight of the Department
of Homeland Security and other Federal agencies to make sure
that better communications procedures and technology are put
into place.
Right now, across the river in Alexandria, admitted al
Qaeda member Zacarias Moussaoui is on trial, facing the death
penalty for his role in the September 11th attacks. As we all
now know, Mr. Moussaoui was in custody weeks before September
11th. His attendance at flight school raised alarms among some
experienced law enforcement and intelligence professionals
about a possible hijacking plot. But as the 9/11 Commission
documented, the Government never pulled together the various
threads of information that could have detected the September
11th plot. Better information sharing was one of the key
recommendations that the 9/11 Commission made.
Hurricane Katrina showed us that serious flaws remain in
the Government's crisis prevention and response communications
capabilities.
The Katrina investigation revealed that President Bush,
Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff, and other top officials
were unaware of the magnitude of the disaster facing New
Orleans until Tuesday, August 30th, a day after the levees
broke. They were unaware of this even though the first reports
of levee breaches came as early as 8 a.m. on Monday, and the
levee breaches were confirmed by late afternoon that day.
In fact, as late as 2 weeks after landfall, President Bush
continued to insist that the levees had not breached until
Tuesday and that there was a sense of relaxation at the White
House on Monday night and Tuesday morning because he and other
top officials believed that New Orleans had ``dodged a
bullet.''
This was an inexcusable failure of the most senior
officials in our Government to comprehend and act on urgent
warnings and vital information.
The second problem causing a lack of information was
technological. Katrina was such a powerful storm that it
knocked out phone lines and radio towers throughout a three-
State region, leaving local officials unable to communicate
their needs to State and Federal officials who had the
resources to help. Some of this was unavoidable. Any large
enough disaster is bound to damage or destroy
telecommunications infrastructure. But there are options, like
a satellite phone, that could provide redundancy and allow
communications when the regular system is down. Yet these were
not in place.
I understand that we invited officials from the Department
of Homeland Security to testify today, but they declined the
invitation. DHS clearly has a primary responsibility for
information sharing during disasters, and I hope that we will
have another hearing where we can hear from representatives of
the Department of Homeland Security.
I want to give my thanks to all the witnesses who did
appear today before us, and I am looking forward to their
testimony.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Henry A. Waxman follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Any other Members wish to make statements?
[No response.]
Chairman Tom Davis. Members will have 7 days to submit
opening statements for the record.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Elijah E. Cummings
follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. We will now recognize our first panel:
Mr. Peter Verga, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense for Homeland Defense, U.S. Department of Defense; Dr.
Linton Wells, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of
Defense, Networks and Information Integration, U.S. Department
of Defense; and Mr. Vance Hitch, the CIO of the Department of
Justice.
It is our policy that we swear you in before your
testimony, so if you would just rise and raise your right
hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Verga, Dr. Wells, who wants to go first? OK. Dr. Wells,
we will start with you and then go to Mr. Verga and then, Mr.
Hitch, you will be cleanup. Thank you very much.
STATEMENTS OF LINTON WELLS II, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY ASSISTANT
SECRETARY, NETWORKS AND INFORMATION INTEGRATION, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE; PETER F. VERGA, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY
ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR HOMELAND DEFENSE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
DEFENSE; AND VANCE HITCH, CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
STATEMENT OF LINTON WELLS
Dr. Wells. Thank you, Chairman Davis, Ranking Member
Waxman, and distinguished members of the committee, for
inviting me here today to discuss this important topic. I would
like to introduce Ms. Deb Filippi, the DOD Chief Information
Officer's Information Sharing Executive. She is charged with
strengthening our information sharing.
While the Department of Defense Chief Information Officer
is responsible for information sharing within DOD and with our
partners, since the specific focus of this hearing is on
following up on the report on Hurricane Katrina, I would like
to pass the microphone to Mr. Verga. I would like, however, to
note that everything that we have learned about information
sharing from humanitarian assistance in tsunami and Katrina, to
stabilization and reconstruction operations in Afghanistan and
Iraq teaches us that successful information sharing and
collaboration is much more than just technology. It involves
policies and procedures, social networks, organizational
training, and as the chairman has noted, leadership. All of
these must be co-evolved with the capabilities in order to
achieve successful outcomes.
I have submitted written testimony. I would like it entered
for the record. I look forward to working with the Congress and
industry on this important topic. I am ready to answer your
questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Wells follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Mr. Verga.
STATEMENT OF PETER F. VERGA
Mr. Verga. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate the
opportunity, along with the distinguished members of the
committee, to come here to address today the Department of
Defense information sharing lessons learned from disaster
response.
Whether on the battlefield or in a disaster area, having
the right information at the right time in order to take the
right action can mean the difference between life or death,
success or failure. DOD has a great deal of experience in the
development and implementation of the essential policies,
procedures, and technologies to enable effective information
sharing and shared situational awareness.
That shared situational awareness--a common perception and
understanding of the operational environment and its
implications--is a core capability recognized in DOD's Strategy
for Homeland Defense and Civil Support, which was published in
June 2005.
The Quadrennial Defense Review, just recently completed,
also recognizes the importance of shared situational awareness
and calls for an information sharing strategy to guide
operations with Federal, State, local, and coalition partners.
The strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support supports
this task and promotes the integration and sharing of
applicable DOD capabilities, equipment, and technologies with
Federal, State, local, and tribal authorities, and with the
private sector.
While we are always striving to do better, DOD's approach
to and capabilities for information sharing and shared
situational awareness have proven effective over time. This
performance is largely due to several organizational and
cultural conditions within the Department.
First, DOD is a strategy-driven organization that plans for
contingencies. Even as we marshal our currently available
capabilities and resources to address a current situation, we
are constantly planning and preparing for a full range of
future contingencies.
As part of this planning culture, DOD expects and plans for
complexity. We plan, for example, to deploy to and operate in
regions where the supporting infrastructure, like roads,
bridges, or communications, does not exist or has either been
destroyed or seriously damaged.
Second, DOD has a highly disciplined yet flexible, multi-
year focused budget and resourcing process that develops the
capabilities necessary to deal with current and future
contingencies.
And, third, as a military organization, DOD exercises unity
of command over Federal military forces, DOD civilian
personnel, and contractors at the strategic, operational, and
tactical command echelons. This unity of command ensures both a
unity of effort and an economy of force, that is, the right
capabilities and forces in the right numbers.
Within the Department, DOD's command and control structure
facilitates effective information flow between command
echelons, whether the contingency is at home or abroad. When at
home, a joint task force is established to command and control
the Federal military forces, guided by the Commander of U.S.
Northern Command in the joint operations area of a disaster.
The NORTHCOM Commander in turn is responsible for ensuring that
the joint task force receives the information it needs and
provides information reported by the joint task force to the
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of
Defense.
Outside of DOD, several venues exist for information
sharing between civilian and military and Federal, State,
tribal, private sector, and nongovernmental organizations.
First, at the Federal headquarters level, incident
information sharing, operational planning, and deployment of
Federal resources are monitored by the Homeland Security
Operations Center of the Department of Homeland Security, where
DOD maintains a 24-hour-a-day/7-day-a-week presence. The HSOC,
as it is known, facilitates interagency information sharing
activities to enable the assessment, prevention, or resolution
of a potential incident.
Second, strategic-level interagency incident management is
facilitated by the Interagency Incident Management Group, which
also serves as an advisory body to the Secretary of Homeland
Security. When activated, the Department of Defense provides a
senior-level representative to that IIMG.
Third, closer to the area of an incident, a Joint Field
Office is established to provide a focal point for incident
oversight and coordination of response and recovery actions.
When established, the Department of Defense posts liaisons
within the Joint Field Office known as Defense Coordinating
Officers.
And, fourth, States usually maintain an Emergency
Operations Center at which operational information sharing and
resource coordination and support of on-scene efforts during a
domestic incident activities normally take place during an
incident and, when required, the Department will also deploy
those Defense Coordinating Officers there.
Additionally, every combatant commander operates a Joint
Interagency Coordination Group, which is a multi-functional,
advisory element that represents the Federal civilian
departments and agencies and facilitates information sharing.
It provides regular, timely, and collaborative day-to-day
working relationships between civilian and military operational
planners.
Mr. Chairman, again, thank you very much for the
opportunity to appear before you today. Thank you very much for
the resources provided by the Congress and the American people
to enable the Department of Defense to organize, train, and
equip to meet the full range of DOD's missions, and I look
forward to any questions that you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Verga follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Mr. Hitch, thanks for being with us.
STATEMENT OF VANCE HITCH
Mr. Hitch. Good morning and thank you, Mr. Chairman and
members of the committee, for the invitation to speak to you
today. I am the Chief Information Officer of the Department of
Justice, and next month will mark my 4-year anniversary with
the Department. Today I will testify about our approach to
information sharing.
The Department of Justice is committed to helping improve
the ability of law enforcement and homeland security first
responders to share national security information. This may
include classified intelligence reports, criminal history
records, or traffic stops. The key to all of this, though, is
the data, helping over 180,000 law enforcement personnel follow
standards so that they can safely and securely share photos,
field reports, and evidence with a fellow officer.
First, I will focus on our umbrella program, the Law
Enforcement Information Sharing Program. This program includes
both internal DOJ sharing, such as between the Drug Enforcement
Agency and ATF, and the Federal sharing with State and local
law enforcement agencies and officers across the country.
The LEISP strategy is the result of a collaborative process
including senior leadership from DOJ component agencies and
representatives from across the national law enforcement
community. LEISP is a program, not an information system. It
addresses barriers to information sharing and creates a forum
for collaboration on how existing and planned systems will be
conducted and coordinated in a unified manner for information
sharing purposes. LEISP delineates guiding principles, a policy
framework, and functional requirements that are necessary to
facilitate multi-jurisdictional law enforcement information
sharing. LEISP establishes the Department's commitment to move
from a culture of ``need to know'' toward a culture of ``need
to share'' in which information is shared as a matter of
standard operating procedure.
With our partners at DHS and the Department of Defense, we
are making great strides in sharing fingerprints across
boundaries. What we refer to as the Interoperability program is
showing great returns as fingerprints captured in theater in
Iraq are being sent to the FBI in West Virginia for comparison
and coordination. DHS, under the US-VISIT program, has access
to this data, and all three agencies are working on new
standards to make this sharing even more timely and efficient.
As this committee is analyzing post-Katrina issues, I
thought it was appropriate to mention two of the successes we
had in the time immediately following the hurricane. As the
Marshals Service moved prisoners from the New Orleans area,
they faced the challenge of coordinating buses and new prison
space. To complicate matters, the prisoners switched arm bands
in hopes of confusing their guards. The Marshals used online
photos and other descriptive data, such as scars, marks, and
tattoos, from the joint automated booking system to ensure that
valid identities were maintained. Another success story was the
development and implementation of the National Sex Offender
Public Registry through the support of the Bureau of Justice
Assistance. This Web site was invaluable to law enforcement as
it helped cities like Houston and Baton Rouge identify known
offenders who had evacuated to their city. While this Web site
was limited to one type of criminal, we see this as a model for
other systems under development.
Now I would like to address a key question. What are some
of the keys to success that we have found in planning and
developing systems that share information within the law
enforcement community?
The first is shared management. It is needed to create a
federation of trust within the information sharing community.
For example, the Attorney General's Global Information Sharing
Initiative has brought together national leaders and law
enforcement to help us develop our LEISP strategy and programs.
Likewise, the Criminal Justice Information System Advisory
Policy Board [APB], provides ongoing governance and working
groups to help us as we build and operate information sharing
systems, including criminal histories, incident reporting,
uniform crime reporting, and fingerprints. Both the Global
group and the CJIS APB are comprised of numerous State and
local stakeholders.
The second key to success is the development of standards,
which is an area where the Federal Government is expected to
provide leadership. Two examples are the Global Justice XML
Data Model and the National Information Exchange Model. Groups
such as Global are important for setting, communicating, and
maintaining national standards and a common vocabulary.
The widespread availability and use of Web services and
commercial technologies will improve information standards over
time. The Federal Government can help promulgate these
standards through incentives such as grant programs and
targeted technical assistance.
In response to the next disaster, data must be accessible
from many places via many methods of telecommunications. Web-
based systems, as opposed to those tied to a personal computer,
allow an evacuated law enforcement officer, like the New
Orleans P.D., to relocate to a city such as Irvine, TX, and
still have access to their data. As long as the system has
adequate back-up and recovery capabilities, many will be able
to complete their work from alternate work locations. Katrina
was a not-so-subtle reminder to Government personnel of the
importance of continuity of operations and proper planning.
In closing, I want this committee to understand that the
law enforcement information is being shared broadly at a local
and regional level. The Department of Justice, in partnership
with many Federal agencies, is attempting to make critical
information exchanges more effective, more efficient, and more
secure for our customers across the United States. We have many
efforts underway that are validating our approach and pushing
new concepts so that law enforcement personnel no longer need
to think about sharing but, rather, it comes naturally and they
share as a matter of practice.
Thank you for your time this morning, and I will be happy
to answer any questions that you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hitch follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Well, thank you very much.
Let me start. This may not be a question you want to answer
here. It is really to all of you. But information sharing, is
this an issue that just cannot be overcome given agency
structures and the congressional authorization and the
appropriation process? I mean, we do things here to basically
create stovepipes, too, just the way that we authorize, the way
we appropriate. We have turf battles up here over the way
committees operate. How would you suggest dealing with
stovepipes, oversight, and funding? And how does that get into
the mix of getting greater information sharing? Does anybody
want to take a stab at that? Dr. Wells.
Dr. Wells. I will start and I will pass to my colleagues.
Since information sharing is a human activity, there are
certainly going to be cultural and organizational biases that
have to be addressed in the process of doing it. I would
actually say that I think the cultural issues are probably
significantly more important than the technical issues, given
where we are today.
One of the things that the Department of Defense has done
over the past several years is to do a series of demonstrations
that we have called Strong Angel, and they have looked at not
only the capabilities but all the sociological and, for us the
military, doctrinal issues needed to overcome some of the
information sharing.
One of the things in tsunami, for example, that we learned
which applied to Katrina was we sent some people down there--a
military doctor, a civilian doctor, and a retired Navy pilot--
and what happened when they got to Jakarta is the two doctors
were welcomed with abrazos by the nongovernmental organizations
there because they had experience working together in Kosovo
and Africa and places like this. The Navy pilot could go on
board the carrier ``Lincoln'' and fit right into the aviation
community.
What they found a few days later when they got together was
that the military was prohibited by policy from sharing
information outside the military boundaries unless asked. The
nongovernmental organizations didn't know they had to ask and
didn't know how to ask. Once those two groups got together,
they were able to make enormous progress very quickly in
sharing information. It was an issue of policy and procedures,
not one of technology.
We applied some of this to Katrina, and there is an
extensive exercise program that Northern Command is working on
in preparation for the summer hurricane season to do this as
well, to not only deal with the technologies but also bring
together those groups of people that need to be able to cross
these boundaries in communications. So I think that is at least
as important a piece as any technological part.
Go ahead.
Mr. Hitch. Mr. Chairman, I have been in the Federal
Government now for 4 years, and I would observe that the
hardest things for me to accomplish had been to work across
departments. So just the size of the organization is a barrier
to communications. But I do think there are mechanisms in place
that can make this more successful.
One that I would hold up as an example in the area of
information sharing is the relatively recent identification
within the DNI of the program manager's office, who is
specifically chartered to come up with an information sharing
environment, first to make sure that we are sharing terrorism
information, but then more broadly to make sure that we're
doing the things that we need to do to share information across
Government departments. And this is something that I
participate in on a weekly basis. We are having weekly cross-
governmental meetings where we are actually on a very
aggressive schedule to develop the concept of operations and
the technology that is necessary to make sure that we are
sharing information successfully.
The program that I mentioned that we have at Justice, the
Law Enforcement Information Sharing Program, is something that
I think I can bring to that group, because we have tried to do
the same thing within our own community in law enforcement, and
the DNI is actually trying to accomplish the same thing across
Government.
I would say this is a good example because there does need
to be a mechanism for bringing people together under some sort
of--some appointed group who has a leadership authority, and
that is the case of the program manager. So I think that is a
good example.
In the case of emergency response and so forth, you know,
the Department of Justice is not primarily a first responder
organization, but in the Katrina situation, we did operate
pretty effectively in our own community, within the law
enforcement community. And I think that we share some traits
with our DOD brethren in terms of, you know, having a command-
and-control structure that is fairly regimented within the law
enforcement community, and also the idea of we know that
emergencies are going to happen, so we plan for them and we
practice them.
So I think those are some things that I observed in my time
in Government that has been successful and I think were the
reasons for some of the success that we had in responding as we
did in Katrina.
Chairman Tom Davis. Do you think the appropriations process
plays a negative role in this, the way we appropriate up here?
Mr. Hitch. I think certainly it makes it more difficult.
The appropriations process is a challenge for us as individuals
trying to get support for the important programs that we are
pursuing. But, once again, I am hoping--this is a little bit
more hope than experience--that through the DNI, that will be a
help in making sure that we get the support across
appropriations groups and that somehow that will get the
message across the line.
Personally, I have had reasonable success. In working with
our appropriators, I think they understand the importance of
the programs for information sharing and how important that is
to us, not only for emergencies like Katrina but for, you know,
responding to the counterterrorism challenge that we had after
September 11th, and a lot of our programs are focused in that
way. And so I think our appropriators have been reasonably
responsible and responsive in helping me deal with those
issues.
Chairman Tom Davis. OK. Thank you.
Do you have any comment on the appropriation process,
either of you?
Mr. Verga. I would only add one comment to what my
colleagues have said, and that is that when we talk about
information sharing as a problem to be overcome, it is good to
keep in mind that it is one of those problems that does not
have an end state that you can finally reach. There will always
be more information to be shared than there are mechanisms for
sharing it. And so I think the fact that we have made
significant progress over the last 3 or 4 years I think shows
us that progress can be made, but I don't know that we will
ever reach an end state where people will be satisfied that all
the information is being shared to the degree they would like
to have it shared.
Chairman Tom Davis. Yes, Dr. Wells?
Dr. Wells. Two things to go with it.
First of all, as we share information, there is such a
thing as too much information, and one can--I have heard people
complain now that so much information is being shared that they
are drowning in data and that, if you will, the signal-to-noise
ratio of valuable information to just useless makes it hard for
them to find the nuggets. And so I think it is important to not
only share, but share what is important for the problem at
hand.
Chairman Tom Davis. OK. Thank you.
Mr. Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to
thank you all for your testimony.
As I see it, we have two general categories of failure to
communicate. You have the one where, I guess, agencies are not
communicating properly. Then you have another one with regard--
when you look at Katrina, with regard to communications
equipment. And I got to tell you, when I read that back a few
years ago, back when there was the Oklahoma bombing back in
1995, we had communication equipment problems. It is almost
shocking to the conscience that we could come all the way up to
2005, in the greatest country, in the most powerful country,
and one of the most technologically advanced countries in the
world--in the world--and still have those kinds of problems.
It is interesting to note that when the folks from my
State, Maryland, went down to the Gulf Coast, they discovered,
Mr. Chairman, that they had better equipment and were better
able to communicate than the FEMA folk, which was incredible to
me. So that tells me that apparently the equipment is out
there. The question is, you know, whether there are standards
for communication equipment. In other words, I understand they
were on different frequencies and all that kind of thing.
But I think that the thing that bothers me as I listened to
all the testimony this morning is I wonder if we will be right
back here 10 years from now, in other words, whether we will be
saying the same things. Other problems will have occurred by
then, and people will have died and people will have been in a
position where, in a matter of less than, I guess, a 100-mile
radius they cannot even communicate with each other.
So tell me, what are we doing with regard to equipment?
What are we doing with regard to standards so that people can
communicate? And keep in mind when you look at the data and you
talk to the people in the Gulf Coast, you know what they said?
They have said it over and over again. ``We were not so much
concerned about the fact that we had a disaster. We knew that
those kind of things happen.'' They said that they felt
abandoned as Americans, and part of that abandonment, I think,
comes from the failure of us to be able to have simple
communications, for me to be able to communicate across the
street. And this is the United States.
I am just trying to figure out what are we doing about
that. This is now our watch. Hopefully we have learned a lot
from Katrina. I pray that we have. And if it is under our
watch, what do we do from here? I mean, what are we able to
say? What is on the drawing board? And what do you see
correcting that communications problem?
Who is most appropriate to answer that? I guess you, Mr.
Hitch?
Mr. Hitch. I don't know that I am the most appropriate, but
I will take the first shot.
Mr. Cummings. All right.
Mr. Hitch. I think, as I mentioned in my testimony, the
standards issue is one that is being addressed and it is
actually expected of the Federal Government. It is something
that we are expected to do and we should be doing, and I think
we are finally getting to the point where we are doing it. And
I mentioned a couple examples in my testimony of some standards
that have been kind of where the Department of Justice has
taken the leadership role.
There is a program that I did not mention but that is in
the written testimony called the IWN, Integrated Wireless
Network. That is where law enforcement officers across the
country still use radio communications. In the near term, in
the not-too-distant future, it will be other forms of
communication, but right now it is a lot of radios.
So we have a major program called IWN to set standards and
to establish a nationwide network for law enforcement across
the country. It is a cross-departmental effort between the
Department of Justice in the lead, Department of Homeland
Security, Department of Treasury, where between those three
departments that is most of the law enforcement in the United
States, to get them all on a common network with common
equipment and common standards and all that kind of stuff. So
that will help a lot.
So there are efforts, and on a local level, part of that
program was something we called the 25 Cities Project, where we
actually go in and kind of take each city and see what the
problems are there and just try to help them solve them. In
some cases, it was buying a piece of equipment. In some cases,
it was providing training. So there are a lot of different
things that cause communications problems that are not just all
technical.
In terms of response to a disaster, in some of the examples
that you alluded to where you could not communicate across the
street and things like that, one of the things that I think are
real lessons learned for CIOs like myself is the importance of
back-up. Now, everybody for decades has known that you should
have back-up for your information systems. But something like
Katrina just brings that point home so clearly that the
survivability of our systems are critical.
You know, as information systems have advanced and our
workers have become more and more a part of their everyday
life, we depend on them. So if they are without them for a
period of time, they are at a loss. They can't do their job.
So taking those systems away and not having adequate back-
up for those systems in time of emergency is just as bad as not
giving them the system to begin with.
So the term ``survivability'' and how do we provide for
that, and actually making sure that we are investing in the
survivability of our systems is, I think, a real lesson
learned.
In some cases where you--in Katrina, you were missing many
layers of infrastructure and kinds of capabilities. You were
missing the power. So if you were--electric power. So if your
systems were all dependent on electric power and you had no
back-up, battery back-up or anything else, you were out. In
some cases, the back-up was gasoline-fired engines, and
gasoline was not available either. So if your back-up depended
on gasoline--first on electricity and then on gasoline, you
were without. So it is really looking at what are the disasters
that we are trying to address, what are the ones we have to
plan for, and what kind of back-up is going to be needed in
order to provide survivable systems under those circumstances.
I think that is the biggest lesson from a technical standpoint.
The standards issues that you mentioned I think are real,
and I think we are making a lot of progress in those areas.
Mr. Cummings. Do we have any timetable for those standards?
I mean particularly when you consider the fact that a lot of
the same kinds of problems--if we had a terrorist attack, we
would need the same kinds of communications systems or
whatever. I mean, have you all set a timetable to try to have
that done?
Mr. Hitch. Yes.
Mr. Cummings. And as you were talking, I couldn't help but
think about the fascination that my daughter, who is now a
grown-up--I will never forget when she saw--you know, she said
she couldn't believe that we were communicating, when she was a
little girl, communicating on Earth to the Moon. To the Moon.
She said, ``Daddy, that's a joke.'' And then I think about how
we are not even being able to communicate within a city, you
know, it is just fascinating to me.
Mr. Hitch. Right. In the case that I gave you of the
Integrated Wireless Network, we are embarking on a program that
is going to take about, give or take a year or so, 5 years to
get that rolled out across the country. And that will provide a
long-term solution to the interoperability problem, but there
are shorter-term solutions which we also have in the mix
because we realize it is going to take a while to get it. There
are technical solutions to solve the interoperability problem
between different law enforcement organizations who happen to
operate on a different standard. They are in existence today.
One of the things--again, back to Katrina, mobility is one
of the things that is important. I mean, if all your
infrastructure is out, being able to bring in something which
is mobile on the back of a truck or something like that to
power the equipment is something that I think really came home
in that kind of an emergency situation.
But on the standards issue, as I said, I think standards by
definition is a longer-term issue, longer-term solution to
problems. It is the ultimate solution, but it is a longer-term
solution. But there are shorter-term answers that we have to
have in the mix also.
Chairman Tom Davis. Mrs. Schmidt.
Mrs. Schmidt. Thank you very much. I am not sure on the
panel who should answer this, maybe all three of you. I think
one of the biggest glitches with Hurricane Katrina was the
inability for people all over the ground to communicate with
each other, and I know that can be a local, a State, and a
Federal issue.
From the Federal perspective, how can we coordinate
communication so that the people on the ground know what is
happening better. And I know that there are going to be some
proposals later from people outside of Government talking about
this very issue. What kind of sensitivity do we have from a
governmental perspective of a security of information
perspective? And how can we make the whole issue of
communicating efficiently and effectively better, and better
pretty soon? Because the next natural disaster or, God forbid,
terrorist disaster could happen at a moment's notice.
Mr. Verga. That, of course, is the nugget of what we are
trying to do. One of the things that you have highlighted is
that there is a fundamental difference between interoperability
of communications, that is, existing communications being able
to work together, and the operability of communications. What
we discovered in Katrina was the issues were more on the basic
operability of the communication side rather than the
interoperability. There were interoperability issues, that is,
system A and system B were not compatible, couldn't talk to
each other. There are a lot of initiatives underway to fix that
particular part of the problem.
But in a situation where you have the majority of the
communications infrastructure, not just the public safety and
security communications infrastructure, but the common
infrastructure generally that is destroyed, the fundamental
policy question is sort of what is the role of the Federal
Government in this case in restoring those communications in a
disaster area. Most of the communications are commercially
owned, so how do you communicate with the American people?
Hundreds of radio towers are down. Television stations are off
the air. The normal means of communicating with the American
people were not available.
So what, in fact, then is the role of the Federal
Government in restoring that communications infrastructure in a
disaster area?
Dr. Wells. One of the initial proposals, for example, was
that the Department of Defense or the Department of Homeland
Security should stockpile radios that could be handed out in
this type of emergency. Well, part of the problem is given the
pace of technology today, if they have a warehouse full of
radios that are degrading at the rate of Moore's Law, or
whatever, it is not a very attractive way to do business.
There have now been a number of proposals to tap the genius
of the private sector, especially for the nongovernmental, and
so one example, for example, is use leased services that says I
need to be able to have a certain amount of communications up
and a certain amount of communications down at three spots
anywhere in the United States within 12 hours. And, you know,
we will keep you on retainer to be able to provide that
capability, and maybe 10 spots in 72 hours.
So this type of approach gets the Government out of the
business of warehousing equipment that could be obsolescent,
allows for the continual upgrading of the capabilities, and
involves the private sector more.
A related piece of this is that technology in this case is
actually on our side because the Internet protocol, which is
the basis of so much of our Internet communications, is now
being able to be extended to mobile communications as well. And
that then allows you to bridge lots of different incompatible
systems, and I think that should be able to help.
If I may make one final point that the Congress could help
with, the emergency responders, the keepers of critical
infrastructure--power, water, telecommunications--are not now
designated under the Stafford Act as emergency responders, and
this got into problems in at least Wilma, I don't know about
Katrina, but of people who wanted to go in and restore
telecommunications, not being allowed through the security
boundaries because they had no valid credential as an emergency
responder. And so if there are ways to make adjustment to that,
I think it could be a real term fix.
Mrs. Schmidt. Mr. Chairman, may I have a followup?
Chairman Tom Davis. Yes, go ahead.
Mrs. Schmidt. In followup to this, gleaning through future
people that will be before us today, one of the things that
came out of additional testimony is an apparent lack of
leadership on the ground, who was really in charge. You talk
about people that wanted to help and didn't have a clearance to
help. Should we have a designated body at the Federal level
that, when a disaster hits a community, whatever agency at the
Federal level will be ultimately and automatically in charge so
that you don't have the tension that may have been created on
the ground between two competing agencies, maybe a State, maybe
a local? And let me tell you where I am coming from. I know
that in some cases, there are laws that are written in various
States and in various communities that these local agencies
have a certain jurisdiction. And it is not a turf battle of
power. It is a turf battle of the way those local laws are
written. And I don't think it is incumbent upon us to demand
that those laws be rewritten, but I think it is incumbent upon
Congress to figure out that in certain cases--a national
emergency, a hurricane disaster at the level of Katrina--that
somebody supersedes those locals on the ground so that we do
not have this kind of confusion.
Having said that, how do you think that should be and who
do you think should ultimately be the decisionmaker?
Mr. Verga. You have addressed what is one of the
fundamental challenges of federalism when you talk about how
the Federal Government responds to any situation that is local
in nature. The current national policy is, of course, that
initial responsibility for responding to disasters of any type
is within the local officials and then with the State
officials. And that is embodied essentially in the Stafford Act
as the legislation that talks to how we respond to disasters.
The legislation that established the Department of Homeland
Security gave to that Department the responsibility for
coordinating the national response to any type of emergency,
natural disasters included. The principle that it operates
under is one of unity of effort as opposed to unity of command,
which is a term which is near and dear to the military. We
always know who is in command of military forces. When you talk
about organizing the efforts of everyone from a parish sheriff
to the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department
of Defense, that is a coordinating effort, not a command
effort. The command, you know, on the Federal side comes
together only at the President, and in the local side it
depends on the State, how different States are organized--
Commonwealths, States, those types of things.
My personal view is I am not sure there is, in fact, a
legislative solution to that issue. The White House did an
extensive study, as you are aware, which was recently
published, on the lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina that
talks to how we better organize the Federal effort to assist,
but I don't think contemplates removing or superseding the
authorities of State authorities beyond those provisions of the
law which already exist. There are several provisions in the
law that go back in history that allow, upon request of the
State or, in the absence of a request, upon the determination
of the President, that Federal authority needs to be asserted
in a given jurisdiction, that can occur.
So I think the mechanisms are probably there. I think if
there is something that Congress can do that can help, it's to
assist in implementing those types of standards that make that
process of getting the unity of effort to work better in terms
of how moneys are appropriated, grants are given, those sorts
of things.
Chairman Tom Davis. OK. Thank you very much. I have one
other question.
Dr. Wells, in your written testimony, you discussed the
need to establish social networks of Federal, State, and local
partners as a critical component of successful response to
catastrophic events. You state that one of the problems with
the response to Hurricane Katrina was the lack of familiarity
with each other's operating practices and experiences gained
through exercises between the U.S. military and Federal, State,
and local partners.
I think that is true. Although they had gone through the
Hurricane Pam exercise at some time, you know, in an effort to
try to get there, what efforts have you all taken to establish
social networks? Can you describe briefly any exercises you
have or plans you have with these partners?
Dr. Wells. I mentioned earlier the Strong Angel series.
There have been two of those that have expressly been looking
at how, in the first case, military medicine reaches out to
nongovernmental organizations in refugee situations; the second
focused on Iraq and Afghanistan stabilization and
reconstruction operations and sort of an Arab world type
situation; a third this summer will focus--in August, will
focus on an avian flu sort of situation, with more domestic,
State and local responses.
Where this bore fruit was in tsunami, particularly, but
also the group came together for Katrina, where we developed a
virtual emergency operations center built around a commercial
collaborative tool, and in there, there were over 600 people,
and you could go in--who had sort of signed up. It was all
voluntary. So you could say, ``I need neurosurgeons who speak
Bahasa Indonesia and also have had experience in southern
Thailand,'' and find such people to go and work the problem.
That group has sort of stayed virtually together and is
available to be brought to bear on, you know, contingencies
around the world, including domestic ones.
So it has been an ad hoc type of effort, but I think these
types of--the only way you get the trust among these groups--I
mentioned the case in Indonesia where the doctors could walk
into the U.N. liaison center and be greeted because they were
one of them. You cannot just say, ``OK, you are in charge today
and go bond with the people of New Orleans.'' If you have not
built up those relations over time, it will be very hard.
So I think this is something we need to establish--to
continue doing, and it will probably be regionally based. The
people who would respond best in the Gulf Coast may be
different than those who would go to San Diego in case of an
earthquake. And so as we build this corps, we just need to
understand the strengths and weaknesses and be able to mix and
match on the fly, using information technology, to put together
the best team for the situation required.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
I want to thank this panel. It has been very helpful for
us. We appreciate the job that all of you are doing. The
challenges remain ahead. So I will dismiss this panel and take
about a 1-minute recess as we get our next panel.
Thank you very much.
[Recess.]
Chairman Tom Davis. We will recognize our second panel. We
have John Brennan, president and CEO of the Analysis Corp.
Thank you for being with us. Dr. Donald F. Kettl, the director
of the Fels Institute of Government at the University of
Pennsylvania. Dr. Brian Jackson, a physical scientist at the
RAND Corp. And Lieutenant Steve Lambert, Virginia Fusion
Center, Virginia State Police.
I want to thank all of you for being here. I am going to
ask you to rise and raise your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
We will start, Mr. Brennan, with you. We may have a vote in
about half an hour, and so I am going to try to get through.
Once the bells ring for the vote, we will have about 10 minutes
before I will have to go over to vote. But it will be our goal
to try to finish up at that point and get you out of here. So
if you can keep your testimony to 5 minutes, your total written
statement is in the record, and my questions are based on
having gone through that. Thank you very much. Mr. Brennan, you
may start. And thanks again for being with us.
STATEMENTS OF JOHN BRENNAN, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE
OFFICER, THE ANALYSIS CORP., McLEAN, VA; DONALD F. KETTL,
DIRECTOR, FELS INSTITUTE OF GOVERNMENT, UNIVERSITY OF
PENNSYLVANIA, PHILADELPHIA, PA; BRIAN A. JACKSON, PHYSICAL
SCIENTIST, RAND CORP.; AND LIEUTENANT STEVE LAMBERT, VIRGINIA
FUSION CENTER, VIRGINIA STATE POLICE
STATEMENT OF JOHN BRENNAN
Mr. Brennan. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very
much for the invitation to appear today. The views I offer
today are my own, but they are informed by 25 years of
experience as a CIA official as well as by my tenure as head of
the Terrorist Threat Integration Center and of its successor
organization, the National Counterterrorism Center.
The term ``information sharing'' has become one of the most
frequently used phrases in Government since the devastating
terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. Members
of Congress as well as senior officials in the executive branch
have railed against the lack of sufficient sharing of critical
information among Government agencies. The problem has been
attributed, at various times, to institutional stovepipes,
bureaucratic malaise, turf battles among agencies, excessive
security requirements, mismanagement of IT resources and
budgets, and a lack of strong and visionary leadership. I do
not disagree that these factors have played a role in
preventing the flow of relevant information in a timely fashion
to departments, agencies, and individuals in need of such
information.
But these factors have been allowed to flourish because of
a much more fundamental systemic problem that afflicts our
Government and our Nation in dealing with matters such as
terrorism, hurricanes, a potential avian flu pandemic, or other
challenges that may be on the horizon. The systemic problem is
the absence of a coherent national framework that integrates
and delineates roles and responsibilities on issues of major
significance. Such a framework is the essential prerequisite to
an effective information sharing regime that optimizes the
formidable capabilities, knowledge, and expertise that are
available in Federal, State, and local governments as well as
in the private sector.
The purpose of sharing information is to ensure that
individuals, departments, and organizations are able, in a
timely fashion, to take some action or to perform some function
for which they are responsible. Such actions and functions
include warning and notification, protection and security,
analysis and forecasting, rescue and recovery, policy
decisionmaking, preparedness, and consequence management--just
to name a few. The challenge for information providers,
however, is that these diverse responsibilities are shared by
many and are scattered across Federal, State, and local
jurisdictions.
In the absence of an overarching framework, or ``business
architecture,'' that effectively integrates and articulates
these responsibilities, the collectors, knowers, and stewards
of relevant information are forced to make presumptive
judgments about ``who'' needs access to ``what.'' Similarly,
the wanters of information are unsure to whom and to where they
should look for information that addresses their needs.
Confusion on both sides of the information divide has stymied
the development of a symbiotic and synergistic relationship
between information providers and users.
Unfortunately, it will take our Nation many years to adapt
our outdated 20th century institutions, governance structures,
and day-to-day business processes so that we may more
effectively meet the challenges of the 21st century. In the
meantime, and based on my experience setting up counter-
terrorism organizations and information sharing practices
across the Federal Government, I strongly recommend the
establishment of a common information sharing and access
environment that can be utilized by the providers and users of
natural disaster information--whether they be Federal, State,
or local officials, law enforcement agencies, the private
sector, or U.S. persons seeking information so they can make
appropriate decisions for themselves and for their families.
Specifically, I recommend the establishment of a Web-based
portal on the Internet that would serve as a National Hurricane
Information Center. Administered by the Federal Government, the
portal would allow authorized information providers to post
information and enable users to self-select information they
need. Such a portal could serve as a one-stop shopping data
mart containing virtually limitless archived and new
information related to hurricanes, such as emergency contact
information, weather reports, maps, first responder
directories, hospital and health care providers, casualty and
damage information, critical needs relief providers, security
bulletins, shelter locations, and other relevant matters.
Information could be organized and searched according to
functional topics, geographic regions, or chronologically.
The portal could be constructed in a very flexible and
versatile manner. In addition to providing general information
to anyone who logs on as well as password-protected proprietary
information accessible only to authorized users, the portal
could serve as a communication mechanism among communities of
interest, such as first responders. Unlike in the intelligence
community, where complicated security requirements and multiple
classified information networks inhibit the creation of a
common information sharing environment, natural disaster
information is not so encumbered. Thus, the ubiquity and
robustness of the Internet makes it the ideal information
sharing and information access platform for the Nation.
While the Federal Government would design and maintain the
portal, there would need to be shared responsibility for
posting, managing, and updating the content according to an
agreed-upon business framework. The Federal Government also
would have the responsibility for ensuring the portal's
availability during emergencies and periods of peak activity
and for the deployment of back-up systems when infrastructure
is damaged. While this portal would not take the place of
established information technology networks that serve as
command-and-control mechanisms for individual departments and
agencies, the portal would serve as a shared, collaborative
information sharing and information access environment
transcending individual entities.
Our Nation faces numerous challenges in the years ahead. In
my view, confronting these challenges successfully hinges
squarely on the Federal Government's ability to integrate
capabilities and to leverage technology in an unprecedented
manner within a national framework.
I look forward to taking your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Brennan follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
Dr. Kettl.
STATEMENT OF DONALD F. KETTL
Dr. Kettl. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for the
opportunity to appear before you this morning and to explore
these issues about information sharing and operational
awareness. The report by the Select Committee on Hurricane
Katrina has already made an important national contribution to
the question of how best to try to share information and to
build a robust national system that could respond to the issues
that we face.
The fundamental problem, however, is that we have too much
thinking from the top down and not enough from the bottom up,
and our principal goal needs, indeed must be, to create a
system from the top down that works from the bottom up. That is
the real driving meaning of what operational awareness means,
to make sure that as we construct our systems, that it is real
for the citizens who need help. And as the Select Committee
identified, we have important issues about communication as
well as command that we need to try to deal with.
The committee today has identified four basic questions
that it wants to explore: culture, technology, structure, and
bureaucracy. And as you sort through this, the thrust of both
my testimony and of some of the other lessons that you have
heard is how important the cultural piece is in establishing
leadership and produce results.
The fundamental question here is what it is that we need to
be focusing on. The focus so often on the cultural side is on a
narrow stovepipe view of issues, but those issues and those
structures never match the way the problems actually occur,
whether on issues of terrorism or natural disasters. We need an
all-hazard approach at the grass-roots level that will allow us
to create a capacity for the Government to respond to the
problems as they, in fact, arise.
The second thing is that we clearly have some technological
issues that we need to face, in part making sure that we have
communications systems that work in times of disaster and that
connect with each other in times of disaster. I have talked
with National Guard officials in Louisiana who have told me
that one of the biggest problems that they had, even with
people from the National Guard from around the country arriving
to try to help, was that they arrived with radios that could
not talk to each other, even within the National Guard. And
those are issues that, Mr. Chairman, we fundamentally have to
deal with.
We have some structural issues. If we had it do over again,
we probably would not put FEMA inside the Department of
Homeland Security, but we also know that continual disruption
to FEMA's operations would only get in the way of getting the
job done. The more fundamental issues are that we really cannot
design any single structural solution that is guaranteed to
solve whatever problem we face. The lesson of an all-hazards
approach means that we must have a much more flexible and
dynamic system that adapts our governmental operations and
capacity to the problems that, in fact, we do confront.
One of the interesting things, in fact, is to look at
FEMA's regional boundaries and compare that to the path of
Hurricane Katrina, and Hurricane Katrina somehow miraculously
found precisely the dividing line between the regions. There is
no reason to think that if we were to redesign the regions that
we would then not simply confront the same set of problems the
next time we face an issue like this.
The last piece has to do with the bureaucracy, and it is
clear that we have rules and procedures and other things that
too often get in the way. What is also clear is that
operational awareness teaches an important lesson, that if we
focus on results to focus on outcomes, we can focus all those
throughout the system on what it is that really matters most.
The good thing is that this is not simply a matter of
hypothetical conjecture. We have clear, demonstrated results
from people on the front lines who have proven that this
approach works. Part of that comes from the work of people like
Admiral Thad Allen, who played such an important role in
coordinating the Federal effort in New Orleans. Part of it has
to do with lessons taught on the morning of September 11th just
across the river here in Arlington County, where Federal,
State, and local officials worked together in a remarkably
seamless way. It is almost as if, Mr. Chairman, they had read
and could have written your report on Hurricane Katrina because
they already have demonstrated the lessons of what it is that
works.
So, in short, Mr. Chairman, we know what it is that works,
and we know that it can be done. We know that what it requires
most is strong and effective leadership. A lot of people
sometimes say that it is just a matter of rocket science, or it
is not rocket science. Well, in a sense it is rocket science
because if you look at the ways in which people, in fact,
launch rockets, they get people from the different disciplines
together in the same room, they work together, they
collaborate, they share information and work together under a
single command to decide what has to be done, how it has to be
done, and make sure that those effective disciplines come
together in the way to make the right decision.
In a sense it is rocket science, and in a sense the lessons
of rocket science are the same lessons that we learned on the
morning of September 11th at the Pentagon. Effective,
coordinated response on the part of Federal, State, and local
officials is something that we know how to do. What we need to
learn how to do is to figure out how to do it more often, more
predictably, and more regularly.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Kettl follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you.
Dr. Jackson.
STATEMENT OF BRIAN A. JACKSON
Dr. Jackson. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, thanks for inviting
me to participate in today's hearing. I should begin by saying
that my remarks are principally based on our published study
entitled, ``Protecting Emergency Responders: Safety Management
in Disaster and Terrorism Response,'' which was a joint
research effort between the RAND Corp. and NIOSH, the National
Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
The focus of our study was on safety management, which is,
of course, a subset of overall disaster management. Many of the
recommendations focused on improving safety management are
focused on information sharing and are, therefore, very
relevant, looking at sort of a specific case within management
of an overall disaster. In our study, we looked at four
disasters: the two September 11th responses, which have been
mentioned previously; Hurricane Andrew in 1992; and the
Northridge earthquake, to, again, sort of build on we have been
learning these lessons over a long period.
Our work was done in close collaboration with the emergency
responder community, including folks who were involved in
managing those response operations, and our recommendations
were also vetted by other emergency responders, so this is
really something that is coming from the responder community.
I really want to focus in on three major lessons to sort of
pull out some of the elements from my written testimony.
First, disaster response operations have different levels
of information sharing requirements. We have been talking about
this as sort of, you know, one topic, but to manage responder
safety, for example, the incident commander at the scene needs
strategic-level information: what injuries are happening to the
responders and what things they can take--changes in the way
that the response is done--to keep them safe.
At the tactical level for individual responders, the
information sharing requirement is very different. Getting
information about what safety actions they need to take to
protect themselves. Again, going back to the September 11th
response, the question about which respirator to wear when is a
very important and operational issue when you are dealing with
a large-scale event.
This suggests that there is a requirements generation
process that is needed in this to ensure that the information
that individual responders, whatever level of safety management
they are, gets there when they need it. And also differences
that exist across the country, even looking at the four cases
that we examined in areas with capable response organizations,
imposing a one-size-fits-all sort of solution from the top
down, there are risks associated with doing that because of the
differences in the way the response organizations structure
themselves and manage themselves. Furthermore, sort of the
answer of getting all information to everyone at all times, to
sort of echo one of the points that was made earlier, is also
problematic because if you have to sift the critical
information that you need out of a very large background of
useful but perhaps not immediately useful information, more
sharing may actually result in the information needs of the
responders not being met.
Second, the goal is not just getting information there. It
is having responders be able to use it when they get there. So
the other part of the equation about making sure that the way
information is presented to different response organizations at
these multi-agency responses is important. The example from the
safety case, telling a responder that a certain contaminant is
at 20 parts per million in the air may be entirely irrelevant
if you do not know whether that is a hazard, or if it is a
hazard, what you should do as a response to it.
And then, last, again echoing a point made by other
witnesses, although technology clearly has a role to play here
and failures in technology can result in bad information
sharing, information sharing is really driven in large part by
people. In a disaster, managers need to know what organizations
to reach out to. If they don't have existing relationships with
those organizations, the time-critical point after a disaster
is not the time they will be looking for the relationships to
build. They have to trust the information that they get back so
they can actually act on it and use it in what is generally a
life safety situation. And so as a result, having
representatives meeting each other for the first time in a
disaster working operation is not a good recipe for success.
So as a result, our core recommendation in our report was
the need for individuals to play this role of human bridges. We
were looking at safety so we focused on individuals we called
disaster safety managers. Again, recognizing differences
between areas, we did not see this as something that was coming
down from the Federal Government, but, again, bringing you back
to some of these sort of human network recommendations you
heard earlier, safety managers have to be local enough that
they have these relationships with the organizations that will
be cooperating if a disaster happens in their area, but also
have the knowledge to know where and how to reach up to the
Federal or other national level organizations that will either
be coming to join or support an operation. To us, that suggests
that a model sort of designating individuals drawn from either
Federal, State, or local organizations where part of their job
was to build and maintain those connections.
So, in closing, I would like to thank you again for the
opportunity to address the committee today, and I look forward
to answering any questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Jackson follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Lieutenant Lambert.
STATEMENT OF STEVE LAMBERT
Mr. Lambert. Good morning, sir. I am Steve Lambert. I am a
lieutenant with the Virginia State Police and the agent in
charge of the Virginia Fusion Center. Thank you for the
opportunity to testify today in this important process, and I
look forward to answering any questions you may have at the end
of this testimony.
After September 11th, law enforcement agencies were forced
to rise and meet the informational demands created by the
increased focus on terrorism. The resources needed to provide
proactive intelligence operations have increased exponentially.
This mere fact has compelled many States and regions to develop
Fusion Centers that bring together key critical response
elements in a secure, centralized location in order to
facilitate the sharing of counterterrorism intelligence
information.
Virginia now has such a center with the primary mission of
fusing together key counterterrorism resources from local,
State, and Federal agencies, as well as private industry, in an
effort to prevent the next terror attack. Our second mission,
in support of the Virginia Emergency Operations Center, is to
centralize information and resources to provide a coordinated
and effective response to a terrorist attack or a natural
disaster.
It is our contention that having a Fusion Center does
alleviate much of the previous resistance to sharing
information that has plagued Government response in the past.
This business of where to get needed information or just what
is available or who can I depend upon for such information can
be a terribly confusing process to most any Government or
private agency. The bottom line is that Fusion Centers provide
a fundamental environment necessary for Federal, State, and
local governments to have the proper intelligence and
situational awareness to perform their jobs.
Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly--it has been
mentioned several times--Fusion Centers are conceptualized to
provide the environment of trust between locals to State and
State to Federal Government agencies. This issue of trust is
absolutely essential. All methods, policies, principles, and
techniques are rendered useless if trust is not established
between these partners. So essentially the fusion process has
created horizontal and vertical bridges for information and
intelligence sharing.
To answer the question the committee is particularly
interested in--``Are impediments to more effective information
sharing primarily technological, or structural, cultural, and
bureaucratic in nature?''--the answer from our perspective is
that the Fusion Center concept provides a structural solution.
It also provides the all important cultural or trust solution.
It also provides somewhat a bureaucratic solution and to some
extent a technological solution. However, there still exists a
foundational and technological hindrance that applies to
effective disaster response.
As you know, part of the intelligence process involves
identifying gaps in intelligence, and with that, and to my
understanding, only a few States have achieved a truly single
statewide real-time information and intelligence sharing
platform. Although the Fusion Center has taken significant
strides toward centralizing this process, there still exists a
serious lack of centralized analysis and dissemination function
on all criminal intelligence. We all know that good terrorism
prevention is good crime prevention and vice versa. However,
and like many States, Virginia currently has a statewide
information sharing system that suffers from poor participation
due to being totally law enforcement centric--excluding all
crimes and all hazards--and running on an antiquated
architecture. There are simply too many silos. Too much
criminal information is being shared by word of mouth and
through personal relationships rather than on a single, Web-
based, real-time information sharing platform.
The solution to this foundational problem, however,
provides tremendous opportunities to revitalize the
intelligence process by providing training and including
eventually all Virginians in the intelligence process. Taking
advise from the 9/11 Report, Virginia has planned to adopt, ``a
decentralized network model, the concept behind the information
revolution, that shares data horizontally too. Agencies would
have access to their own data bases but those data bases would
be shared across agency lines. In this system, secrets are
protected through the design of the network and an information
rights management approach that controls access to the data,
not the access to the whole network.''
Therefore, and in conclusion, how can we avoid the
inadequate information sharing and murky situational awareness
that characterized the governmental response to Katrina?
Establish a Fusion Center or Fusion Centers built on the
foundation of a truly integrated, Web-based, statewide
information sharing platform that includes all crimes and all
hazards.
Thank you very much, sir.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lambert follows:]
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Chairman Tom Davis. Well, thank you very much.
The votes beat us to it. What I am going to do is take a
20-minute recess, and we will come back and try to move through
the questions in short order.
So I will declare a 20-minute recess, and we will be back.
Thank you.
[Recess.]
Chairman Tom Davis. The committee will reconvene.
Dr. Jackson, let me start with you. Despite the existence
of the Hurricane Pam exercise, Katrina showed how even when you
predict a disaster, you train for it, it almost always is not
sufficient. How do you get people at all levels of Government
to get on the same page for preparedness and training?
Dr. Jackson. Well, in talking to the responders in our
research process, the answer that we got from them about that
is that it is not a single exercise. It is relationships built
over time.
One of the issues about the safety area in particular is
that, in contrast to information sharing areas where you can
articulate the information that you want to share beforehand,
in the safety area it is entirely dependent on the nature of
the disaster. So you have to be able to be flexible to reach
out through relationships that you perhaps would not have
thought would be important beforehand. And so, really, the only
answer to that is sort of, you know, repeated interactions
between responders during preparedness activities, in
exercises. The experience at the Pentagon was cited earlier by
one of the panelists. That is an example where that repeated
experience over time and the fact that the responders involved
had built up those relationships and trust meant that they
could adapt flexibly and have the operation go much more
smoothly.
Chairman Tom Davis. So it's like any teamwork, isn't it?
You do your training and your training and your training, and
one session does not do enough to create the kind of teamwork.
Dr. Jackson. Absolutely. You play like you train. And, you
know, on these relationships, you know, when--especially, there
will always be people who rotate in and out of jobs, you know,
within the Federal Government, within the State responder,
local responder organizations. There are people who get
promoted and move on. And so you need this ongoing process over
time, because even if you buildup the relationships today and
they are perfect, if, you know, three of those people go on to
be promoted and take other jobs, you need to do it again
tomorrow.
Chairman Tom Davis. So it is practice, practice, practice.
Dr. Jackson. Right.
Chairman Tom Davis. Dr. Kettl, in your opinion, has the
Department of Homeland Security sufficiently integrated the
local and State emergency management functions to ensure a
coordinated emergency response?
Dr. Kettl. Among the many concerns, Mr. Chairman, I have
about the Department of Homeland Security, my biggest concern
is the lack of integration of State and local issues into the
Department of Homeland Security. To be fair to them, they have
an enormous challenge in trying to bring 22 different agencies
together into a coordinated whole, but the fact is that all
homeland security events begin as local events. And the
instinct, as unfortunately we saw in Katrina, is not to view
State and local responses as critical or integral to their
operations. It is perhaps the next generation of responses, but
it is a generation that needs to be sped up enormously.
If there is anything that the Department of Homeland
Security needs most to do is to devise a far more effective
partnership with State and local governments.
Chairman Tom Davis. Yes, I agree with you. Just trying to
take 170,000, 180,000 employees in 22 agencies, different
cultures, different systems, different silos, I think sometimes
our expectations are out of whack to expect that to work
overnight. And we saw with Katrina that just their own internal
communication was not what it ought to be.
Dr. Kettl. I fear that is right, Mr. Chairman. But the
point--and this is the source of greatest worry--is that
process of trying to integrate all of these complex pieces
together has created a kind of top-down approach within
Homeland Security, which is understandable. But in the end,
Department of Homeland Security operations will only work if
they are real from the bottom up and show a sense of
operational awareness. And we learned the hard and painful way
in the aftermath of Katrina that those instincts,
unfortunately, are not there.
Chairman Tom Davis. Right, and that was an unforgiving
storm.
Mr. Brennan, you testified that we lack a cohesive national
framework for emergency response. Have you looked at the
National Response Plan, which really never had a chance to be
implemented with Katrina because we had----
Mr. Brennan. Yes, Mr. Chairman, I have.
Chairman Tom Davis. What do you think it needs? To be
enhanced? Scrapped? What are your thoughts on it?
Mr. Brennan. It is a very bulky document that I think a lot
of people do not understand, and it has not really been
absorbed within the Federal Government or beyond. I think there
are some good ideas and concepts in there, but it also runs
afoul of some of the existing statutory responsibilities,
authorities, and there are a lot of differences of view about
the roles and responsibilities of individual departments and
agencies even under that National Response Plan.
Chairman Tom Davis. Also, I mean, if you do not train on
it, it is such a big plan you are not going to wait for the
storm to hit and then read the plan in terms--if you do not
train on it--right?--if you do not practice on it, it is not
going to do you really any good when the big storm hits, is it?
Mr. Brennan. Right. I think it is--as difficult as it was
to draft a document like that, it is much more difficult to
implement it. It is like a piece of legislation. You know, as
difficult as it is to get it through the legislative process,
actually operationalizing it is a far cry from passage of that
legislation.
Chairman Tom Davis. Do you think it has too much
flexibility, or do you think it is too prescriptive? Do you
have any thoughts on that?
Mr. Brennan. It has been a while since I have looked at it,
and I think now is the time, after Katrina, to take a really
hard scrub at it and see why aspects of it did not work. But I
think some of the underlying structures that it really would
need in order to be realized still are absent.
Chairman Tom Davis. I would just tell you that I know the
problem we had with Katrina was that Michael Brown did not
believe in the National Response Plan, because in Florida in
2004, an election year, a key State, he was given kind of carte
blanche to do what he needed to do. He was talking directly to
the White House. The National Response Plan changes all that.
He has got to go up through a chain of command, and he was not
used to that and did not think he needed to do that. And it
seemed like about halfway through, all of a sudden the White
House is saying, look, you better go through channels on this.
That led to frustration, and the e-mails show that we just kind
of crumpled under that.
Mr. Brennan. Structure, discipline, and
institutionalization of these efforts really is just a
prerequisite to actually making things work well in emergency
situations.
Chairman Tom Davis. Now, you have had experience with DIA
and the FBI and other intelligence agencies. What strategies
and tactics do you think are the most effective in getting
everybody to play ball?
Mr. Brennan. Well, there are many different aspects of the
ball game. On the information sharing side, in my testimony I
talked about the importance of having a common information
sharing environment. When I set up the TTIC and the NCTC, we
had something called TTIC Online and then NCTC Online that all
the different stakeholders would be able to provide information
to. So it was a one-stop shopping.
And I think if you take it away from a single department
solution or a single functional sort of area, you know, what--
it is not a defense issue. It is not an FBI issue. It is not a
law enforcement issue. It is not even a single strata issue, as
far as Federal, State, or local. You need to have something
that is going to bring things together, and there are many
different aspects of it: information sharing, communication
that we have talked about, command and control. And that is why
I really do think a lot of our governance structures and
institutions are very much outdated to deal with 21st century
problems.
Chairman Tom Davis. OK. Thank you very much.
I think one of you mentioned and in the previous panel they
mentioned about how too much information could be a dangerous
thing. How does too much information hurt you? Just the ability
to sort it out and prioritize? I mean, can somebody explain
that to me?
Dr. Jackson. Well, I was one of the people that echoed the
earlier panel. I mean, too much information is a problem if
what is important gets lost in the flow of it and you can't
pick it out.
Chairman Tom Davis. Right.
Dr. Jackson. You know, a lot of our focus in our research
was at how to protect individual responders at the lowest
level. So, you know, you have a responder who is taking
operational action. They have a lot of missions to accomplish
at a disaster. They want to know what they need to know, when
they need----
Chairman Tom Davis. Like you say, charge that hill.
Dr. Jackson. Yes.
Chairman Tom Davis. Without getting into the foreign policy
and all that kind of stuff behind it.
Dr. Jackson. Yes. And if you have to sort of pull out what
piece of equipment you should be wearing and what exactly you
should be doing from, you know, an entire tome describing
everything at the event, you are not--actually, your need,
information need, is not being met even though the information
has been shared.
Chairman Tom Davis. OK. Lieutenant Lambert, let me ask you
a couple questions. You noted that the creation of the Fusion
Center really breaks down the resistance to information sharing
that is ubiquitous in Government. In your experience, what has
been the key to successfully pursuing that new approach to
information sharing?
Mr. Lambert. It seems like we are singing the same chord of
trust, having the organizations that are represented, whether
it be the FBI, the National Guard, the Department of Emergency
Management programs, whoever the first responders are or the
information sharers in the same room together in the same
building. Actually building on personal relationships I think
is probably, at least from my experience, the most important
thing we can do.
Chairman Tom Davis. You know, Gaebler and Osbourne wrote a
book a few years ago called ``Reinventing Government,'' and
they have a chapter on mission-driven Government versus
regulation-driven Government. And one thing we found in the
Katrina investigation is when the military came in, all of a
sudden things got down because they were mission-driven. When
we saw FEMA and everybody else there trying to go by the book
and everything else--and I guess relationships play a role in
that. But as we drill on these issues, as you practice and so
on, are we doing enough preaching about accomplishing the
mission? Or do we preach don't violate the rules and the
regulations? Anybody have a thought on that? Dr. Kettl.
Dr. Kettl. Mr. Chairman, I think that is exactly the right
point because it both gets to the question of how to deal with
the avalanche of information that comes down as well as the
question of how you bring different pieces together.
What we know is that operational awareness tends to frame
the nature of the problems that have to be solved. If you can
get people to agree on what problem has to be solved, it is
much easier to bring the pieces together, and it is a lot
easier to deal with the process of breaking down the stovepipes
if everybody understands what their contribution is to
evacuating people off of roofs when they are surrounded by
floods, how to get food to people who are hungry, how to deal
with avian flu. If the problem drives the solution, it defines
the players who need to be involved. It focused them on the
nature of the result. And to the degree to which you can get
people focusing on that instead of procedures, rules, and
structures, coordination is much, much easier. The lesson that
people in the first response community over and over and over
again is focus on the problem, allow that to drive the nature
of the partnerships, and it is a lot easier to then get past
the bureaucratic boundaries that so often hamstring action.
Chairman Tom Davis. We have a section of the Katrina report
where we talk about some of the unsung heroes, and a lot of
these people, they were not going by the rules and regulations.
We had one doctor who literally broke into Walgreen's to take
what drugs were there before they became flooded. He got out of
there and walked out with his bag so he could help people who
had left home without their prescriptions and the like. We had
other folks that were commanding boats that were just hanging
around and that would have been flooded out otherwise,
basically very, very mission-oriented. Even when you see the
action movies, you never saw Steve McQueen or anybody look at
the rules and regulations to get it done.
Now, there is a fine line between being mission-oriented
and abusing the rules for other purposes and so on. So, you
know, we do the oversight on contracts and everything else. We
have to recognize that in an emergency situation sometimes the
rules need to be relaxed.
I don't know how you preach that, but maybe it is the trust
between all the elements that you discussed, the fact that they
practiced and drilled together and have relationships which
makes a difference and helps you define reasonable boundaries
in times of crisis. But that seemed to be a lot of the problem
with Katrina. You had the elements working together, but did
not trust each other. They knew what--they sort of knew what
the mission was. They were told what it was. But at the end of
the day, even though we had prepositioned more assets than any
other storm in history, it was not near enough. This storm was
not just predicted. What happened was predictable, but nobody
really got it. I think there was a lot of jockeying around for
position and so on, but the storm, which was predicted with
absolute--it was absolute in terms of what they predicted, the
category, where it would land, but the folks down below really
did not get it. And even though they had gone through Hurricane
Pam, but you did not have that string of existing relationships
that could have made a big difference in this case. This was an
unforgiving storm. You make a mistake. It gets exaggerated just
because of the size of it, and then the ensuing flooding.
Let me ask Lieutenant Lambert another question. Altering
Government agencies' perceptions of information sharing,
viewing it as a benefit to everybody, as opposed to giving up
turf, if you understand what I am saying, it is the biggest
obstacle at the Federal level that we have to overcome. It may
be a little easier at the State level to get people working
together. You have a strong leader. You have Governor Kaine,
let's work for the team. At the Federal level, it is a lot more
difficult. You have a lot of entrenched career people that have
survived a lot of administrations. Even on Capitol Hill, turf
and jurisdiction drive this place to a great extent. A lot of
good does not happen because people are nervous about what
their jurisdictional battles are going to be in the future of
their committees.
What challenges have you faced in this area of trying to
get around the perceptions of information sharing and turf
battles? Have you had any firsthand experience with that in
Virginia?
Mr. Lambert. Well, I submit that the same turf battles that
the Federal Government experiences also the State government
experiences as well. And we have had to take measures to try
and develop trust among the locals, State to local. So I can
appreciate what they are going through.
I know we went through a time that for some time, just
trying to figure out who was organizing Federal intelligence,
that we might relate with them rather than dealing with so many
different Federal agencies. I think we have--and to DHS' credit
here lately, they have really reached out to us, and we have
even started a pilot of three more information portals along
with the possibility of putting someone in the Fusion Center
to, again, strengthen those personal relationships.
But you are absolutely right. It is difficult to overcome
all of the bureaucracy.
Chairman Tom Davis. It helps to have George Foresman up
here, too, in Washington, doesn't it?
Mr. Lambert. It doesn't hurt. Yes, sir.
Chairman Tom Davis. Dr. Kettl, many have suggested that
FEMA be at the center of homeland security events. But FEMA
really was not designed to be a first responder or even
coordinate the first response. Isn't that right? Can you have
FEMA at the center of all operations without enlarging its
original scope?
Dr. Kettl. FEMA's role, Mr. Chairman, has changed
dramatically over time, and its organizational structure has
changed along with it. It is clear that somebody needs to be in
a role of playing the central coordinating function. I think of
it as kind of a conductor of an orchestra, that you can have a
variety of different instruments that appear before you,
creating all kinds of different instruments depending on the
score that orchestra is trying to play, and the key is having
an orchestra conductor skilled enough to be able to play
Beethoven one night and Bach the next.
The problem is that FEMA does not see its job as either
that orchestra conductor or it does not have the skills for
figuring out how to do it. Somebody has to do the job.
Chairman Tom Davis. And it should be Federal, right?
Dr. Kettl. It should be Federal, and FEMA is as good a
place as any to put it. Now, to do that would require, first,
recognizing that is its job; second, getting the political
support both from Members of Congress and from senior
administration officials to define that, in some cases to
provide some additional resources, but then to provide a lot of
extra support and leadership essentially to make Lieutenant
Lambert's job easier. FEMA's job ought to be to make Lieutenant
Lambert's job work better, to try to provide better response in
situations like New Orleans.
Chairman Tom Davis. In the case of Katrina, Michael Brown
was not just the head of FEMA. He was the Federal officer in
charge. He was designated--he took it as a demotion, by the
way, when it was given to him. And there probably should be
that overlap between FEMA and the people being in charge on the
ground, but it may be new to FEMA in the sense that they are
not necessarily used to this. They were used to coming in 2, 3,
4 days later and doing the mop-up work.
OK. Well, I appreciate that. Is there anything else anybody
wants to add?
Mr. Brennan. If I could make just one comment?
Chairman Tom Davis. Sure.
Mr. Brennan. Talking about mission, the challenge is that
there are multiple missions that are underway in any type of
national disaster or challenge. And it is an unprecedented
systems integration challenge that you have law enforcement,
you have rescue and recovery, you have security, you have
information sharing, you have policy. And my experience has
been that there are a lot of disputes about who actually has
that statutory authority to exercise command and control over
disparate mission elements that are outside of individual
departments and agencies that go beyond the Federal area. And
that is one of the things that I think is going to continue to
be a challenge for, you know, natural disaster response.
Chairman Tom Davis. Thank you very much.
I am interested in having Ambassador McNamara, who is the
new program manager for the information sharing environment,
testify before this committee. I know he is just getting
settled into his new position, but is interested in appearing
as soon as possible, and given his important role in
information sharing across Government and the committee's role
in setting the government-wide information policies, we would
like him to appear here first when he is able to do so.
I again want to thank this panel and the previous panel. It
has been very, very helpful to us. Hurricane season begins
officially June 1st, although it begins when it begins. And,
you know, who knows whether disasters may strike, and we need
to be ready for them. And I hope we have learned the lessons,
and I hope this testimony, the administration will take it
seriously. I know this committee does.
Thank you very much. The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:18 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
.